Austin is a small city, and the tournament was rather small as well compared to last year’s when the N. America regional was combined with Europe. (Maybe cause there are only 8 of us WC3ers) The people are very nice, as they usually are in smaller cities. The primary attraction in Austin is a nightly flight of the bats from under the bridge, which I failed to witness. Incidentally I just now realize I forgot to check the concert in the park Sunday evening..

Met some new people this year. I first met bunny at season 4 in New York back in ’05 or ’06, and she came to this regionals. She is very nice and one gets the impression she favors WC3. Raspot has huge eyes and a loud, impressive laugh, even by South American standards I’m sure. (I’m aware that Mexico is in NA) He brought his friend, Matthieu? Mattias? something like that, with him who is a well-traveled and nice fellow. Orange of WCReplays flew down from Canada to shoutcast.

There’s not much to say about the tournament itself, it being rather standard. Notably they didn’t have any of the WC3 matches physically on stage, probably for sound isolation reasons? During game three of Raspot versus CrunCher, one of the machines disconnected and they had to replay it. While in the main stage area watching LongWalk play Raspot we heard the latter let out a scream in the other room when his Archmage died on Secret Valley. (he likes to scream a lot actually). SonKiE shoutcasted exceptionally well for his first time. On the first day we were told to go set up at 9:30. At around 9, all of the Warcraft 3 players excepting Yeggi and Deuce were already there, while there were maybe 3 or 4 wow players. And I think that’s all.

I didn’t take any pictures, but I’m sure some others guys did and they’ll probably add you on facebook so you can see them, hehe.

I’ve been reading the Analects. Like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, which came later, this is something you can read three times in a row, and then do it again later.

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end (which you can never afford to lose) with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

story lacks depth and not enough cinematics to glue it together and it doesn’t even make a lot of sense

so far

and I’m pretty hard to please, hehe.

http://www.wcreplays.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1201177 lol

http://www.wcreplays.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74917 lol

LEVIN: [AIG] owed you $2.5 billion.

BLANKFEIN: They owed is $2.5 billion.

LEVIN: The government did not owe you $2.5 billion, did we?

BLANKFEIN: No, the government did not.

LEVIN: But you ended up with $2.5 billion of taxpayers’ funds.

BLANKFEIN: That we would’ve gotten from an insurance company, had we not.

LEVIN: Yes, but you wouldn’t have gotten it from the taxpayers.

BLANKFEIN: Well, we weren’t looking to get it from the taxpayers.

LEVIN: But you got it from the taxpayers.

BLANKFEIN: In lieu of what would have come from the insurance — from the…

LEVIN: From the private party. We didn’t owe you any money.

BLANKFEIN: I didn’t…

LEVIN: Two private parties owed you money that either AIG or that insurance company that you insured the AIG debt with. So why do you end up with $2.5 billion of taxpayers’ money in your pocket, when we don’t owe you the money. AIG owes you the money or an insurance company owes you the money.

BLANKFEIN: Because — because the U.S. government decided not to allow AIG to default. And if they had defaulted — that is, if they had not paid us the money, they would have been in default, and we would have gotten paid from an insurance company.

LEVIN: You would have gotten paid from somebody other than the taxpayers.

BLANKFEIN: Correct.

LEVIN: So why do you end up with $2.5 billion of taxpayers’ money?

BLANKFEIN: Because the government made a decision that the government didn’t want to AIG to default.

LEVIN: And you could have gotten that money from a private insurance company.

BLANKFEIN: Correct.

LEVIN: And so now you’ve got money of the taxpayers in your pocket.

BLANKFEIN: No, we got money from AIG.

LEVIN: That was taxpayers’ money, Mr. Blankfein. Yes?

BLANKFEIN: AIG got money from the government…

LEVIN: Taxpayers’ money.

BLANKFEIN: … that paid it over to us.

LEVIN: Right. That’s all I’m saying.

BLANKFEIN: … so that we got that $2.5 billion instead of the $2.5 billion we would have gotten in insurance.

LEVIN: I know we’re going round and round.

BLANKFEIN: We are.

LEVIN: But the facts still are that you got $2.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on a private deal. Does that bother you?

BLANKFEIN: It bothers me to the…

LEVIN: So why didn’t you go after that other insurance company instead of taking taxpayers’ money? Why isn’t that unjust enrichment at the expense of taxpayers? Why did — why didn’t you go after the insurers?

BLANKFEIN: Because insurance — it was insurance against the default of AIG. By the U.S. government intervening, AIG didn’t default, and therefore they didn’t owe us the insurance. So we were either going to get it from AIG or upon their default, from the insurance.

Short impromptu “articlet” so sue me if it’s rough.

Improvement can perhaps be divided into two types: incremental and leaps. Emphasis is typically placed on the former type–practice, practice, practice until you get it right, make no mistakes, etc.

This is an error.

The improvement leap is the result of single fundamental changes. For example, swimmers who do a stroke a certain way will on a whole be better than swimmers who don’t do it that way.

In strategy games, choosing the correct strategies can result in leaps of performance. For Human players, the difference between fast expanders and non fast expanders is enormous.

So I hope this gives you something to think about whatever you’re doing. When in doubt, follow the best!
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